#mate

What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things, a civilisation torn and unable sensibly to adjudicate between the worthwhile ends to which money might be put and the often morally trivial and destructive mechanisms of its generation. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#material-goods #meaning #money #things #triviality

Traditionally men have created a deep split between the inner and outer world, between body and soul, between the material and spiritual world, between love and money and between male and female qualities. The inner man and woman are related to money, creativity and financial abundance. Through investigating the roots of the inner man and woman, we can find the creative potential of both the inner man and woman. Sometimes can either the inner man or woman also provide financial support for both sides, while the other side has the idea that it cannot support itself financially. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#creativity #financially #inner-man-and-woman #love #material-world

The author points to the impact of what he called Dutch disease, where the discovery of found wealth from a particular commodity causes a culture to atrophy with respect to work ethic and broader development. Continuing wealth from the single commodity is taken for granted. The government, flush with wealth, is expected to be generous. When the price of that commodity drops, a government which would remain in power dare not cut back on this generosity. ↗

— Daniel Yergin

#idolatry #materialism #prosperity #money

The successful cannot be unhappy -- it was a contradiction in terms. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#materialism #money #satirical #success #money

Nothing in the tangible word that isn't living has any value beyond a dollar amount. Considering that dollars can only buy more tangible and inanimate objects, it would seem a far more worthwhile goal to instead learn to place value on the treasures of the mind. Memories, knowledge and skill together are the only things we will ever actually own. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#knowledge #materialism #mind #money #objects

[He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary. ↗

— Lauren Willig

#inanimate-objects #motivational

Sex parties, alcohol and drugs lost their appeal to Sven after a while. Music never did, in his continual search for that sober connection--intimacy with one person over a long period of time, as opposed to periods of intimacy with a bunch of random faces. ↗

— Jess C. Scott

#connection #drugs #happiness #incubus #intimacy

A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. --John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson ↗

— John Steinbeck

#nature

The left-hand path adept seeks to liberate him/herself from passive subjection to the illusory nature of Maya, thus freeing the consciousness from the binds of self-created delusion. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#jivanmukta #left-hand-path #materialism-versus-spiritualism #spiritual-transformation #nature

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#materialism #nature